Productive Limitations

Was super pleased and in good company presenting my 25 latest paintings, [Red & Blue] from the series Productive Limitations, at the Gladstone Hotel’s //The Annual// Shifting Ground this past October 10-13 here in Toronto. Thanks to curator Katherine Dennis for her work in creating cohesion out of disparity for this group exhibition. Here a few detail shots I took of the work, as well as an install photo by fellow exhibitor, Tom Ridout. Thanks Tom!

Productive Limitations [Red & Blue] 2013
Acrylic on wood panels
12″x12″[25]

Top: Details
Bottom: Install photo by Tom Ridout

More on Productive Limitations:
Imagined as a modular system, Productive Limitationsexploits the same process over and over, such that each panel is constructed following the exact same sequence of steps. Even so, product defies process, as aleatory chance enters the equation and no two panels are exactly alike.

With the basic unit of one square, there exist four possible orientations for the work —simple enough. With just four of these squares, there arise 45,280 possible permutations [ordered combinations] of the work. With twenty-five panels, as the work is shown here installed, the possibilities jump to 3,761,767,332,187,389,431,968,739,190,317,715,670,695,936,000,000 [or 3.76 x 10 to the power of 48].

^{The audience was invited to move the panels around to explore some of these iterations – allowing them to ‘shift the ground’.}